Google remembers Grace Hopper: What was her contribution to the world?

Born on December 9, 1906 was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language.

She conceptualized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first modern programming languages. She is credited with popularizing the term “debugging” for fixing computer glitches (inspired by an actual mothremoved from the computer).

Owing to the breadth of her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as “Amazing Grace”.

The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) is named for her, as was the Cray XE6 ”Hopper” supercomputer at NERSC and also a study room atChalmers University of Technology.